List Pricing Still on the Decline in Third Quarter

New data category, however, shows full data records being purchased at a premium.

By Bill Mickey
Wednesday, August 29, 2012

List marketing agency Worldata has released its latest pricing research, and metrics for the third quarter show flat-to-down pricing trends across all of the list categories the firm tracks—a trend that's been ongoing since summer 2010.

New this period, however, is a category that tracks list purchase data—not just rentals—reflecting marketer interest in lead nurturing rather than direct offers. According to Worldata, more full records are being purchased for unlimited use, which shows marketers are using lists to identify different categories of prospects for broader multiplatform campaigns. "We are now seeing that many marketers are buying full data records—including a contact's postal address, email address and phone number for a much higher price and can use it through their home-based ESPs," says Worldata senior vice president Ray Tesi in a statement. "This way they can provide brand awareness before sending any direct offers and nurture the prospective lead."

The pricing on the full data lists far surpasses the postal or email pricing, with the small business category priced at a $540 CPM and medium to large business category priced at a $620 CPM. By way of comparison, the next most expensive list is the permission-based international email category, which, for the third quarter, dropped $6 to a $401 CPM.

While Worldata says the pricing fluctuations across the list categories have settled down a bit, the continued declines indicate competition among list rental firms is still driving pricing lower.

The aggregated business email category dropped $8 per thousand to $164 when compared to the same period last year, the sharpest decline of all the categories. The books and CDs, business magazines/controlled, business magazines/paid, consumer merchandise buyers, donors and aggregated database-business categories were the only ones that edged up—either by one or two dollars. The consumer magazines postal list dropped slightly by $1/thousand to $93, when compared to the third quarter last year.